With the weather stopping any ringing activity since the 17th January, I grabbed the first opportunity to get out and set my nets. The forecast was for it to be wet and windy overnight but, with the weather scheduled to settle down by 6:00, and forecast to be dry with low winds for the rest of the morning, Friday looked good. I had gone out and topped up all of the various feeding stations on Wednesday, so was confident of a decent catch.
I was joined by Miranda, Rosie, Teresa and Andy at Webb’s Wood at 7:30 and we had the usual nets up and open by 8:30. The first bird out of the nets was a retrapped Marsh Tit, this was followed by a number of Blue, Great and Coal Tits.
The catch was slow and steady throughout the morning, manly titmice, with little outside of that until we caught a Lesser Redpoll at 10:00:
Ault male Lesser Redpoll, Acanthis cabaret
We did have another one get into the nets, but it escaped the net as Miranda went to extract it. Apart from this we did ring our fifth Great Spotted Woodpecker of the month. This makes this the equal best monthly ringing total for this species in the Braydon Forest with March 2017. However, four of those ringed are females, and that is twice as many as we have ever ringed in a single month before. If we catch another tomorrow, in Somerford Common West, then it will be a new record for us. That we have already, in one month, caught and ringed more Great Spotted Woodpeckers than we did in the whole of 2023 is, in itself, quite astonishing.
The list for the day was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Blue Tit 16(10); Great Tit 7(4); Coal Tit 5(4); Marsh Tit (1); Goldcrest 1(1); Chaffinch 1; Lesser Redpoll 1. Totals: 32 birds ringed from 7 species and 20 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 52 birds processes from 8 species.
This winter there does seem to have been a considerable resurgence of two particular diseases within the local bird populations: Fringilla papillomavirus in the Chaffinches and Avian pox in Great Tits. Today we were blessed not to find any Chaffinch with FPV, hence we could ring the bird, but this poor bird we did catch:
Adult male Great Tit, Parus major
We didn’t ring the bird, just released it. One interesting point about it: I extracted it from the net along with a female Great Tit. They were at the same height and within twenty centimetres of each other. I would be reasonably confident that they were a pair, which definitely goes to show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
We closed the nets and took down at 11:30 and were off site by 12:30.
One footnote: this is our best January ever in the Braydon Forest, and this is on the basis of the number of birds ringed. That this has been achieved without access to one of our heavier catch sites (the Firs), and no feeding station in another (Ravensroost Wood – permission has just been granted to set the feeders up there this weekend, so hopefully we will have a decent catch there on Tuesday when it is next scheduled for a session). With another two sessions to go it can only get better. Another 75 birds and it will be our best month in the Forest ever: without the driver of any sort of bird migration.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 